Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
10 min listen
Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth about why Sir Keir Starmer and his frontbench have been seemingly missing in action during the Tory leadership race and the ongoing cost of living crisis.
21 min listen
Freddy Gray questions Biden’s supposed ‘hot streak’ (00:55), Mary Killen warns that a neighbourly feud is worse than a hosepipe ban (07:19) and Jonathan Miller talks about France’s sexual civil war (11:43).
Ukraine appears to be faring well in its fight against Russia. Explosions have rocked a Russian military base in Crimea and the country’s president Volodymyr Zelensky is confidently stating that the war must end with the liberation of Crimea. Aid is also pouring in from the West. But Ukraine has been here before – and Putin’s Russia could, once again, be preparing to up the ante. Any talk of Ukraine’s triumph looks dangerously premature – particularly as we approach the month of September. In the summer of 2014, Ukraine was managing to fend off Russian advances and making significant gains. Then, at the end of August, everything changed. As Ukraine celebrated its independence day on 24
Household energy bills are rising very rapidly, and are now expected to be over £4,000 per year by October and possibly over £5,000 per year by early 2023. Many commentators, including most notably Gordon Brown, are saying that we should now nationalise the energy companies and bring bills down. Would that help? It’s rather unclear what is being proposed by those that advocate nationalisation. We can think of the energy sector as having three layers. First, there are those that create or collect energy. These are firms that run wind farms, hydroelectric plants, solar panels or nuclear power stations, or mine coal or drill for oil or gas. At this
Kim Jong-un’s notorious sister is back in the limelight. Not only is Kim Yo Jong reiterating her hostile words against South Korea and the United States, but she is also seeking to reinforce the loyalty of the North Korean people to her brother. How better to combine the two than to infer that the Supreme Leader had, in fact, caught coronavirus. When North Korea first disclosed cases of a ‘fever’ in May this year, the world waited to see how the country’s rudimentary healthcare system and largely unvaccinated population would cope. Nearly three months after that revelation, Kim Jong-un has ‘declared victory’ over coronavirus. Although the regime still refers to
Poor Rishi Sunak. Membership polls put him 30 point behind Liz Truss but there’s still three-and-a-half weeks to go in the Tory leadership race. The former Chancellor is being forced to spend his summer traipsing around the country, trapped in some hideous purgatory, waiting for the sweet release of 5 September to halt the seemingly endless number of hustings, debates, interviews and meetings. But it seems the longtime heir apparent is having as much luck online as he is offline. Mr S has done some digging and Sunak has spent more than two-and-a-half times has much as Liz Truss on Facebook adverts, for all the good that it has done
As interest rates hit nearly 2 per cent and inflation tops 9 per cent, many Brits are feeling the pinch. But once again it seems that generation rent is worst off. Last month, my landlord hiked my rent by £450, or nearly 30 per cent. I’m far from alone: rents across the UK have gone up by as much as 17 per cent. Renters in the UK have been overlooked since the cost of living crisis began to grip the country earlier this year. With inflation soaring and the cost of energy, water, food, petrol and other essentials also rocketing, life is suddenly, alarmingly, getting more expensive. The Bank of England’s
13 min listen
‘Profit is not a dirty word’, Liz Truss said at last night’s leadership hustings. The Foreign Secretary has made clear that she would prefer to cut taxes than take money from energy firms and give it directly to struggling Brits. But, if Truss makes it into No. 10, could she really reverse the windfall tax? Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls. Produced by Max Jeffery.
With all the crises coming down the track, the Union has not received as much attention as it should in the Tory leadership contest. But given that the October supreme court hearing on the Scottish government’s plan for another independence referendum will push the issue right back up the agenda, the candidates should be thinking about it more. As I say in the Times today, the new prime minister will be the fourth that Sturgeon has dealt with as first minister. Whoever wins should follow three rules in dealing with her. First, they should not allow her to treat them as some kind of foreign visitor when they come to
Shalom from Manchester, where Liz Truss has visited a synagogue. This being the Tory leadership race though, every visit is a chance for a good bit of self-promotion, with team Truss firing off a press release to mark the occasion. But amid pledges to pursue a free trade deal with Israel and give more support for the British Jewish community, Mr S was struck by Truss’s promise to ‘change woke civil service culture that strays into anti-Semitism’. Such a claim, without any supporting evidence, has prompted bemusement and even anger from former and current civil servants. Sam Freedman, a former adviser in the Department for Education, called it a ‘bizarre
Gordon Brown is demanding Parliament be recalled for an emergency budget. By October, he says, quoting a study he commissioned from the University of Loughborough, half the population could be living in fuel poverty. ‘Not enough thinking is being done about the major social crisis,’ he told Radio Four’s The World at One on Monday. The former Chancellor and Prime Minister does, of course, have every right to make what representations he wishes to the government, and no-one can call him a hypocrite for wanting the Chancellor and MPs to sacrifice their summer holidays for an emergency budget. His first holiday as PM, in 2007, famously lasted half a day
If the reports are right and it was Ukrainian special forces who destroyed as many as 20 Russian aircraft at Saki air base in Novofedorivka, Crimea, on Tuesday, president Volodymyr Zelensky might be minded once more to raise a glass to the British. Earlier this year it was widely reported that British special forces were in Ukraine training local troops – but perhaps they also found time to pass on some of the regiment’s illustrious history. It was the Special Air Service (SAS) who pioneered the tactic in North Africa, destroying over 200 Italian and German aircraft in a series of devastating raids 80 years ago. The SAS had been
The Bank of England recently raised hackles by predicting that the economy would shrink in the final quarter of 2022, with Britain spending the whole of next year in recession. Liz Truss was especially critical, saying that a recession was not inevitable. In last night’s Cheltenham debate she again referred to the subject, saying that it was important we did not ‘talk ourselves into a recession’. But could a recession arrive actually earlier than the Bank of England predicted? This morning’s figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest that the economy shrank by 0.1 per cent in the second quarter of this year. If the figures for the
Oh dear. David Lammy is in hot water yet again. With six figures’ worth of outside interests, it can be hard to keep track of all those extra payments. And now the Shadow Foreign Secretary’s media outings have tripped him up once again, thanks to no less than 16 occasions in which he did not declare payments on time. They include a number of commercial radio shows and Black History Month speeches, with a total value of more than £35,000. Kathryn Stone, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, opened an investigation on 15 June. The rulebook states MPs must declare any interest that may reasonably be considered to influence their actions
11 min listen
Thirty thousand people waited 12 hours or more in A&E, new figures showed today – the highest number on record. The NHS usually runs into trouble during the cold winter weather, but it looks like the annual crisis has already arrived. Is there any solution? Max Jeffery speaks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Max Jeffery.
39 min listen
In this week’s episode: Who’s to blame for the water shortages? James Forsyth, The Spectator’s political editor and Ciaran Nelson from Anglian Water join us to discuss the UK’s deteriorating water supply. (0.29) Also this week: Is it time for some old-fashioned Tory state-building? Tim Stanley from the Telegraph shares his vision for a Conservative future. He’s joined by Annabel Denham, Director of Communications at the Institute of Economic Affairs. (11.19) And finally: What’s behind France’s new sexual politics? Jonathan Miller writes about a new civil war in France between the nudes and prudes. He’s joined by Louise Perry, columnist and author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. (23.08)
Do you hate Russia, or do you hate Putin? That’s the central question behind a current debate about whether to suspend tourist visas to the EU for all Russian citizens. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky started the ball rolling last week in an interview with the Washington Post, where he said that the ‘most important sanction’ that the EU could impose on Russia was to ‘close the borders, because the Russians are taking away someone else’s land’. He added that Russians should ‘live in their own world until they change their philosophy.’ Much as one might admire Zelensky’s resolve and leadership, his call for a visa ban is absolutely and dangerously
Is the EU about to shatter? There is increasing talk of it after the bloc’s well-publicised difficulties with Poland and Hungary in the last week or so. This is almost certainly premature: nevertheless, the events are significant, and even if they do not break the EU they could precipitate some profound changes. For some time, undeclared guerrilla war has subsisted between the EU and its two maverick eastern members. Both face multiple court complaints from Brussels about what it sees as rule of law issues and they see as their internal affairs. Hungary is facing allegations of infringement of media freedom and LGBT rights, Poland on stated threats to judicial independence
It’s the Glorious Twelfth tomorrow and participants are looking forward to an excellent day of shooting. The Countryside Alliance are expecting a bumper supply of grouse, thanks to excellent weather, with the birds doing their best to avoid the guns of the finest shooters in England. One of those who’ll presumably be joining the fray is Sir Nicholas Soames, of whom surprisingly little has been heard since he stepped down from parliament in 2019. His once overactive Twitter account is now largely confined to retweets and there’s sadly far less of his familiar face in the media than there once was. Now tipped for a peerage in Boris Johnson’s resignation
Three cheers for Suella Braverman. The Attorney General has made clear that it is not appropriate for schools to teach young children that gender is a choice. Speaking at the think tank Policy Exchange on Wednesday, Braverman stated that teachers should not be in the business of indoctrinating children with ‘one sided and controversial views on gender’. To do so, she warned, may leave them in breach of government guidance. What’s more, Braverman indicated, schools should not allow children to change gender – whether by using a different name or pronouns, wearing a different uniform, or using the toilets meant for the opposite sex – without their parents’ consent. Thank